Carl Sagan as 'Mr. X' talking about cannabis. With my analysis..

Carl Sagan was in the public eye working for the government with Nasa. He is best known for his books (pale blue dot and cosmos), as well as the Pioneer Plaque and the Voyager Golden Record (both sent out of our solar system).. he made Cosmos: A personal voyage which was the most widely watch public american TV series ever. As well as the science fiction book turned movie Contact. He received a Hugo, Peabody, and 2 Emmy awards. As well as a Pulitzer Prize. Since he worked with the U.S. Government and Nasa he could not be completely open about his advocacy of Cannabis. Instead he wrote an article under the pseudonym 'Mr. X' in 1969. It wasn't until after his death it was revealed that he was 'Mr. X' .. The following are some excerpts from that essay as well as my analysis on how correct he was..

---

It all began about ten years ago. I had reached a considerably more relaxed period in my life – a time when I had come to feel that there was more to living than science, a time of awakening of my social consciousness and amiability, a time when I was open to new experiences. I had become friendly with a group of people who occasionally smoked cannabis, irregularly, but with evident pleasure. Initially I was unwilling to partake, but the apparent euphoria that cannabis produced and the fact that there was no physiological addiction to the plant eventually persuaded me to try. My initial experiences were entirely disappointing; there was no effect at all, and I began to entertain a variety of hypotheses about cannabis being a placebo which worked by expectation and hyperventilation rather than by chemistry. After about five or six unsuccessful attempts, however, it happened.

---

This is common among people trying Cannabis for their first time. It often has no affect initially. However, try and try again and it will eventually hit you! It is funny that he considered that it may be a placebo caused by hyperventilation. He would have been in his mid 20's at this time. When he finally felt that there was more to living than science. He goes on to describe his first experience of being high.

---

I was lying on my back in a friend’s living room idly examining the pattern of shadows on the ceiling cast by a potted plant (not cannabis!). I suddenly realized that I was examining an intricately detailed miniature Volkswagen, distinctly outlined by the shadows. I was very skeptical at this perception, and tried to find inconsistencies between Volkswagens and what I viewed on the ceiling. But it was all there, down to hubcaps, license plate, chrome, and even the small handle used for opening the trunk. When I closed my eyes, I was stunned to find that there was a movie going on the inside of my eyelids. Flash . . . a simple country scene with red farmhouse, a blue sky, white clouds, yellow path meandering over green hills to the horizon. . . Flash . . . same scene, orange house, brown sky, red clouds, yellow path, violet fields . . . Flash . . . Flash . . . Flash. The flashes came about once a heartbeat. Each flash brought the same simple scene into view, but each time with a different set of colors . . . exquisitely deep hues, and astonishingly harmonious in their juxtaposition. Since then I have smoked occasionally and enjoyed it thoroughly. It amplifies torpid sensibilities and produces what to me are even more interesting effects, as I will explain shortly

---

This is quite the first experience, though my first experience was equally amazing with different results. From his description of his adventure he was definitely feeling it though.. he goes on to clarify that he knew the things he was seeing weren't real and he could rapidly come down anytime he wanted.

---

I want to explain that at no time did I think these things ‘really’ were out there. I knew there was no Volkswagen on the ceiling and there was no Sandeman salamander man in the flame. I don’t feel any contradiction in these experiences. There’s a part of me making, creating the perceptions which in everyday life would be bizarre; there’s another part of me which is a kind of observer. About half of the pleasure comes from the observer-part appreciating the work of the creator-part. I smile, or sometimes even laugh out loud at the pictures on the insides of my eyelids. In this sense, I suppose cannabis is psychotomimetic, but I find none of the panic or terror that accompanies some psychoses. Possibly this is because I know it’s my own trip, and that I can come down rapidly any time I want to.

---

I have also smiled and laughed out loud at the pictures on the inside of my eyelids. So I get this feeling. He is saying that its easy to come down from and that it caused some psychoses, however it didn't come with there terror or panic that accompanies other psychotropic drugs..

---

The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before. The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I’m down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse. There also have been some art-related insights – I don’t know whether they are true or false, but they were fun to formulate. For example, I have spent some time high looking at the work of the Belgian surrealist Yves Tanguey. Some years later, I emerged from a long swim in the Caribbean and sank exhausted onto a beach formed from the erosion of a nearby coral reef. In idly examining the arcuate pastel-colored coral fragments which made up the beach, I saw before me a vast Tanguey painting. Perhaps Tanguey visited such a beach in his childhood.

---

He describes how art was lost on him when he was young, and it wasn't until he had the help of Cannabis that he could truly appreciate it. The same went for music.. he was able to for the first time hear the separate parts of a three-part harmony and the richness of the counterpoint. He also made the same statement about food and sex(that Cannabis brought new appreciation to these too). That's an interesting concept from one of the smartest people who ever lived. Isaac Asimov was quoted as saying only 2 people in the world were smarter than him, Carl Sagan and Marvin Minsky

---

I do not consider myself a religious person in the usual sense, but there is a religious aspect to some highs. The heightened sensitivity in all areas gives me a feeling of communion with my surroundings, both animate and inanimate. Sometimes a kind of existential perception of the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of myself and my fellow men. And at other times, there is a different sense of the absurd, a playful and whimsical awareness. Both of these senses of the absurd can be communicated, and some of the most rewarding highs I’ve had have been in sharing talk and perceptions and humor. Cannabis brings us an awareness that we spend a lifetime being trained to overlook and forget and put out of our minds. A sense of what the world is really like can be maddening; cannabis has brought me some feelings for what it is like to be crazy, and how we use that word ‘crazy’ to avoid thinking about things that are too painful for us.

---

This is the main reason for my love of Cannabis. The insights I can gleam that would otherwise go unnoticed. Sometimes profound, sometimes hilarious. I do indeed have a better understanding of what people consider 'crazy' due to my experience with the awesome plant. He continues saying..

---

When I’m high I can penetrate into the past, recall childhood memories, friends, relatives, playthings, streets, smells, sounds, and tastes from a vanished era. I can reconstruct the actual occurrences in childhood events only half understood at the time. Many but not all my cannabis trips have somewhere in them a symbolism significant to me which I won’t attempt to describe here, a kind of mandala embossed on the high. Free-associating to this mandala, both visually and as plays on words, has produced a very rich array of insights.

---

This is the opposite of what many think. Many people think when you are high you forget more and remember less. I feel the same way about being high as Carl Sagan describes. I remember things, but I gain new insights on my memories..

---

There is a myth about such highs: the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved when high are real insights; the main problem is putting these insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we’re down the next day. Some of the hardest work I’ve ever done has been to put such insights down on tape or in writing. The problem is that ten even more interesting ideas or images have to be lost in the effort of recording one. It is easy to understand why someone might think it’s a waste of effort going to all that trouble to set the thought down, a kind of intrusion of the Protestant Ethic. But since I live almost all my life down I’ve made the effort – successfully, I think. Incidentally, I find that reasonably good insights can be remembered the next day, but only if some effort has been made to set them down another way. If I write the insight down or tell it to someone, then I can remember it with no assistance the following morning; but if I merely say to myself that I must make an effort to remember, I never do.

---

This.. this is on point. So many profound thoughts, they can come and go. It takes effort to write them in a way a sober you can recall and use later. I however have lived most of my life 'up'!

---

I find that most of the insights I achieve when high are into social issues, an area of creative scholarship very different from the one I am generally known for. I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of gaussian distribution curves. It was a point obvious in a way, but rarely talked about. I drew the curves in soap on the shower wall, and went to write the idea down. One idea led to another, and at the end of about an hour of extremely hard work I found I had written eleven short essays on a wide range of social, political, philosophical, and human biological topics. Because of problems of space, I can’t go into the details of these essays, but from all external signs, such as public reactions and expert commentary, they seem to contain valid insights. I have used them in university commencement addresses, public lectures, and in my books.

---

He is most known for space and science. So him being able to get into Social Issues is impressive. He himself thanked the Cannabis for that!

---

I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, unavailable to us without such drugs. Such a remark applies not only to self-awareness and to intellectual pursuits, but also to perceptions of real people, a vastly enhanced sensitivity to facial expression, intonations, and choice of words which sometimes yields a rapport so close it’s as if two people are reading each other’s minds.

---

I didn't say this. Carl Sagan did, but I agree that this is true. I have thought this, but I could never be so concise when telling others about it

---

I have mentioned that in the cannabis experience there is a part of your mind that remains a dispassionate observer, who is able to take you down in a hurry if need be. I have on a few occasions been forced to drive in heavy traffic when high. I’ve negotiated it with no difficult at all, though I did have some thoughts about the marvelous cherry-red color of traffic lights. I find that after the drive I’m not high at all. There are no flashes on the insides of my eyelids. If you’re high and your child is calling, you can respond about as capably as you usually do. I don’t advocate driving when high on cannabis, but I can tell you from personal experience that it certainly can be done. My high is always reflective, peaceable, intellectually exciting, and sociable, unlike most alcohol highs, and there is never a hangover. Through the years I find that slightly smaller amounts of cannabis suffice to produce the same degree of high, and in one movie theater recently I found I could get high just by inhaling the cannabis smoke which permeated the theater.

---

This is the funneist paragraph to me. He describes driving while high and says its possible, but not recommended. Talks about how he can still respond as capably as he would sober if need be. He also compares it to alcohol, noting that there is no hangover like there is associated with alcohol. He ends talking about contact highs.. in a movie theater I wish I would have been in!

---

There is a very nice self-titering aspect to cannabis. Each puff is a very small dose; the time lag between inhaling a puff and sensing its effect is small; and there is no desire for more after the high is there. I think the ratio, R, of the time to sense the dose taken to the time required to take an excessive dose is an important quantity. R is very large for LSD (which I’ve never taken) and reasonably short for cannabis. Small values of R should be one measure of the safety of psychedelic drugs. When cannabis is legalized, I hope to see this ratio as one of he parameters printed on the pack. I hope that time isn’t too distant

---

Here is where he is completely wrong, trusting that the government would legalize it. Here we are almost 50 years later. With the possible Federal legalization of Cannabis not even looking like its on the horizon. His view on how doasages might work is an interesting one that is not applied to legal Cannabis today, although it would be nice to see it implemented. I believe the affects vary to much from person to person to make this a viable way of guessing proper dosages. It would still be interesting to see them try to label it as such. I will end where he ended, with the most frustrating part about cannabis (even in 1969)..

---

the illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.

---

That statement is on point, and not taking into account the medicinal benefits that Cannabis was found to help. Which I believe are innumerable . Still, to him.. the illegality of Cannabis was outrageous!!

---

---

As always, thanks for taking the time to read this. The full article can be found here I hope if you disliked Cannabis, that this helped normalize it for you! Carl Sagan was an awesome person no matter if you take into account his love for Cannabis or not. For us casual smokers, this makes him even more great than the normal world thinks he was. Once he died, it was revealed he was Mr X. To this day, his wife is still continuing the push for the legalization for the greatest plant on earth.

Stay safe and smile often everyone
@drpuffnstuff